1) Field of Invention
The present invention relates to contents distributing services, and more particularly, to a technique for preventing problems to be caused by differences in systems.
2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, electronic music distribution (EMD) which sells music contents through the Internet has started to prevail.
There are several EMD service distributors, each using their own distributing systems. For the protection of copyright, each distributed music content is protected to be used (e.g. reproduced or copied) by the software dedicated to its distributing system.
Accordingly, user terminals such as personal computers (PC), in order to purchase music contents using the EMD services, require the dedicated software for each distributing system.
Usually, the dedicated software is provided for free by each company providing EMD services in a plug-in system which is used to add functions to the basic software. The provided software runs on the basic distributing software which is common to a plurality of distributing systems.
On the other hand, portable devices (PD) have appeared on the market which write the music contents purchased on the user terminal to a recording medium or to an internal memory, as well as reproduce the contents.
Currently, there are several types of PDs. For each type of PD, only a limited number of distributing systems can be used to write or reproduce contents. The software unique to a distributing system guarantees that a user can purchase or reproduce a music content on a PC, but does not guarantee that a user can write or reproduce it on a PD.
Therefore, it often happens that users mistakenly purchase music contents that cannot be used on their PDs, against their intention. That is, it happens that the distributing software used for the purchased music contents is not compatible with the PDs of the users, thereby causing problem of not being able to use the purchased contents on their PDs.
If the sold contents are reproducible on the PCs, most EMD distributing companies are not willing to have the sold music contents to be returned, even if it is not reproducible on a particular PD; in the standards of the EMD services, it is considered normal if the product is reproducible on PCs.
Users, then, might go to the makers of the basic distributing software or the makers of the PDs, for complaints and compensations, thinking that they are the ones who are accountable.
This could result in damage to the makers' image and confidence.
Moreover, the reception of unusable music contents, whether for pay or not, results in a waste of line usage fee, provider fee, electricity cost, and user's time, if only a little.